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In all locations it’s hard to take in all the textures and colours or spot all the detail going on behind the action. Needless to say, the classic fight on a drifting barge is back too. We get mountain shrines, Egyptian temples and pirate ships, not to mention icy wastes and weird baroque monuments that seem patterned after carousels. Battles are staged in palatial gardens, ancient halls and misty swamps where dodos waddle through the arena while hippos munch in the background. Lest we forget, this is a series that has always been known for its incredible backdrops, and Soul Calibur IV doesn’t disappoint. The lighting and the use of post-processing techniques like focus blur gives the game an effect that’s part cinematic and part airbrush fantasy painting. I thought Ninety-Nine-Nights and Devil May Cry 4 had established new benchmarks for reflective breastplates, swords and shields, but Soul Calibur IV makes even that work look clumsy. I’m a little disappointed to see that Namco has taken a trip into the seedy Dead or Alive T&A district when it comes to character design – I’ve never seen so many female fighters who look like they’re on their way to a World of Warcraft-themed S&M party – but the amount of care and detail that has gone into the human (or inhuman) form, not to mention arms and armour, is frequently breathtaking. On that, we should be clear.īut once you get past that slight disappointment, Soul Calibur IV is utterly fantastic. This isn’t the Resident Evil 4 or Half-Life 2 of fighting games just a more gorgeous, more polished and more generous package of what we’ve already had before. The eye candy might have moved on in leaps and bounds since Soul Calibur I, but the basic combat hasn’t. While the fighting seems to take place in full 3D, you still have little control over movement outside of a straight 2D plane.ĭespite the incorporation of the Havok physics engine, the arenas are no more interactive than they were in previous versions and there’s little evidence of any realistic location-by-location damage modelling going on. Can Soul Calibur IV turn things around? Can the series still deliver one more genre-redefining masterpiece?Īfter a few hours with Soul Calibur IV your answer will probably be “maybe not.” It’s not that Soul Calibur IV doesn’t push the boundaries at all – it’s undoubtedly the most beautiful and graphically advanced fighting game ever made – but like the last iterations of Tekken and Virtua Fighter it plays safe. Now a new version is looked forward to with about as much expectation as the average FPS. Once, Soul Calibur was the beat-em-up that redefined expectations of the genre and actually looked like it might rescue Sega’s doomed Dreamcast. The fighting game that then made jaws drop around the world now feels as familiar and comfortable as a pair of old slippers. As I bought more weapons and developed better strategies this became less of a problem, but getting stuck can make the game feel like a grind.Let’s face it, Soul Calibur IV was always going to struggle to make the same impact that the original did when it appeared at E3 in 1999. For many of the later missions in the game, I found myself having to repeatedly attempt a mission until my opponents took pity on me and became dumb enough to even the odds. This is a game where a few mistakes can easily end a match (or even just one, depending on how close one is to the edge of the stage) which makes it easy for the AI to dominate. Something to note: the AI is a lot more brutal than I remember. Unlocking all of the weapons is a driving force for making progress in single player mode. They add uniqueness to the characters, as well as some extra depth for those bored with the vanilla game. After being purchased, the weapons are then free to be used in both Weapon Master and unlockable versions of the other modes like Arcade and Survival. Every character has about a dozen weapons, each with their own unique properties like longer attack reach or the inability to block. These days SoulCalibur is known for its robust character creator, but this was the start of it. Gold in particular is alluring because it allowed me to purchase weapons, which serve as a way to customize my characters.